The Hryvnia shed roughly 50% of its value over the course of just two days, a stunning rout that places the country a hair’s breadth away from default. Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves are now down to a minuscule $6.42 billion (and falling!), enough to cover just five weeks worth of imports. The usually accepted rule of thumb among economic analysts is that a country needs at least six months worth of “import cover,” and that anything less than 3 months is a crisis situation. Unless it receives substantial assistance in the immediate future, Ukraine will have less than a month’s worth of foreign currency: if reserves go much lower than they are at the moment, the country could quite literally run out of dollars and euros. Read more >>>
